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Welcome to the SSBV Aerospace & Technology Group website

SSBV is a Dutch-led, technology driven company, active in the domains of (aero)Space and Defence & Security.

Based on in-house technology, engineering, assembly and test skills, SSBV has grown to a high-tech, product-based solution provider at unit, subsystem and system level. The company also provides services related to remote sensing & monitoring and communication.

The company was established as Satellite Services BV in 1985, and re-branded to SSBV Space & Ground Systems NL in 2010 as part of the overall SSBV Aerospace & Technology Group establishment. SSBV operates as a group of high-tech, SME-sized companies with operations and SSBV Group members located in The Netherlands, The United Kingdom, Poland, Ireland, Germany, Denmark and South Africa.

The SSBV headquarters and a number of other Group companies are located in the SSBV building in the Space Business Park in Noordwijk aan Zee, The Netherlands, whereas the largest foreign subsidiary company (SSBV Space & Ground Systems UK) is located in Portsmouth, United Kingdom.

Within SSBV and its group companies, a wide range of activities are supported. These range from the provision of ground based systems for simulation, test and communication to the provision of smallsat subsystems and components. SSBV is also actively involved in the development and qualification of a unique smallsat-capable mini-SAR (radar) instrument under the name PanelSAR.

For Defence & Security applications, SSBV provides products and solutions based on a cross-over from its aerospace product lines as well as specific products, originally developed for this market segment. Example of this are the ACRIDS Precision Airdrop System, a range of RF / Spectrum recorders for SIGINT / ELINT and compact, low-power Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) sensors.

SSBV Defence & Security was in attendance at this year’s NIDV Symposium & Exhibition at Ahoy, Rotterdam. It was a busy day, with many visitors at the SSBV stand from both the governmental and commercial sectors.

Particular interest was shown in SSBV’s Precision Airdrop Systems, Communication Monitoring and RF data recording products, as well as the innovative SAR-based radar solutions for space and near-space applications.

This morning the climax of a unique space mission lasting more than 10 years has started to unfold: The Philae lander was detached from the Rosetta spacecraft, to attempt the first ever landing on a comet (67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko). All of this taking place over 500 million kilometers away from Earth.

Rosetta and its Philae lander were launched in March 2004 following many years of development of the instruments, the spacecraft, lander and ground infrastructure to enable the deep space communications required to control and monitor Rosetta (amongst others).

For over 10 years, Rosetta has been travelling through space, performing precision navigation to rendezvous with a comet. This year marked quite some events regarding this accomplishment. In January 2014 Rosetta was ‘woken up’ following a 3,5 year hibernation, travelling through space on its own. In August Rosetta actually got into an orbit around the comet and sent back unqiue images and scientific data regarding the comet. Between then and some weeks ago a landing spot was selected for the Philae Lander and ‘as we publish’ the lander has separated from the spacecraft, embarking on a 7 hour descent, to arrive on the surface in a time-slot centered around 17:02 CET today.

Image copyright ESA

SSBV Space & Ground Systems NL (in those days operating under the name Satellite Services B.V.) was actively involved in the design and verification of elements of the spacecraft, its instruments/lander before launch.

Activities included the provision of equipment for the validation and test of Rosetta’s subsystems responsible for the “all-important” communication and Telemetry / Telecommand exchange, the RF Suitcase for ground-station compatibility testing and, furthemore, the SSBV team worked in close co-operation with almost all the international science teams that provided the instruments, cameras and sensors deployed on Rosetta and the lander. For this purpose SSBV developed and provided a ‘Rosetta simulator’ (ROSIS) which was used for early development, testing, spacecraft integration and post-launch support.

From the SSBV offices in Noordwijk The Netherlands, the team is anxiously following the events and crosses fingers for a successful landing of Philae. Thumbs up for Rosetta and Philae!

The European Space Agency (ESA) provides live coverage via several (social) media outlets. See www.esa.int/rosetta for more.